Chapter Text
Peggy Carter stares blankly at the concrete wall in front of her, silently tightening a trauma blanket wrapped around her broad shoulders and thinks, I need to make a list.
Lists are something Carter understands. They’re simple, they’re indisputable. They don’t have distracting feelings, or perspectives, and don’t need things like hugs and a good long cry. She’s been making lists for as long as she’s been alive, for everything from slogging through a mathematics doctorate and codebreaking for the British government and constructing battle plans to doing her laundry and picking dinner and forcing an unlucky Howling Commando to create a diversion. Everything can be done with a list.
So, she makes a list.
- Find out where Steve Rogers is.
She has one thing on her list. This is progress. Progress is wonderful. She accepts a bowl of reheated stew from the polite and starstruck blonde man in front of her, mumbling out a quiet thank you and spooning it into her mouth with trembling hands.
The hilt of her sword is still seated in her lap and her shield rests protectively against her shins.
- Have a nap, shower and meal. Change out of her uniform (ruined with cosmic tentacle slime and ash). Do her hair and nails. Have a long, healthy and luxurious crying session,
Peggy looks around her at the near empty break room inside the facility she’d appeared in, watching as Blonde Polite Man babbles nonsensically into a black square of glass and Commander Eyepatch carefully inspects her, grumbling into his cup of black coffee.
Might have to postpone that lovely date with nihilism.
- Read a history book. Or several. Or a dozen. Enough that she learns what happened in the last 70 years.
This isn’t an urgent thing. She can live without it. For a while more. But she really wants to know what has happened, and what she missed, and where Steve is, and what happened to HYDRA, and where the hell on planet earth she’s ended up.
- To Be Continued
“Captain Carter? A helicopter’s here to pick you up. Express trip to S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters in Washington D.C., ma’am,” Blonde Polite Man smiles gently, eyes wide and shining. He reminds her vaguely of an excitable and exceedingly polite Labrador.
Peggy huffs out a laugh as he helps her to her feet, looking up at her in quiet awe.
She follows them to the landing pad, grip tight on her only earthly belongings left. Included in that pathetic collection are her blood-soaked sword and shield, a life-saving fleece blanket with internal aluminium lining and her beloved bowl of stew.
The mighty Captain Carter, everyone! Clutching at the only things in the world she can still call hers like a little schoolgirl, getting flown to the American capital to be scolded by high command for having a good old-fashioned romp with a giant angry tentacle creature for over half a century!
Blonde Polite Man and Commander Eyepatch stare at her in the helicopter cabin as she watches out the window, quickly finishing her soup as the vehicle lurches and soars.
Apparently 70s years is enough time for the flimsy and experimental choppers of 1943 to get a serious upgrade. Wonderful.
“Captain Carter. An honour to meet you,” Blonde Polite Man greets, holding out his hand and showing off a boyishly handsome and quintessentially American grin. Peggy blinks at him and shakes it, weak smile tugging at her lips.
“If it wasn’t classified, I’d be telling my daughter all about you. She’s a big fan, posters on her wall and history books on her shelf,” he smiles. Carter returns it, feeling just a bit stronger in will.
“If you are cleared for sharing, tell her my thanks. Maybe I’ll share an autograph, brighten her day,” she offers. Blonde Polite Man grins again, eyes twinkling with mirth. Emphasis on Polite, Carter underlines in the new list in her brain. It’s a list of new people she has to remember, for important reasons.
“My name’s Clint Barton. I hope we’ll meet again after this, Captain Carter. You seem like a lovely woman,” he compliments, as Peggy puts a side-note on the person list to keep in touch with Barton, to give that autograph to his daughter and keep their blooming allyship strong.
Something in Commander Eyepatch’s face twitches with slight mirth and kindness, but he still looks as tired and genial as always. Peggy already respects him immensely; she knows a good leader who cares when she sees one.
She watches night-time desert speed by in the cabin window and lets her forehead touch the cool glass, letting out a discreet sigh of exhaustion
---
S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters (they renamed SSR after her, and it’d be sweet if it wasn’t so bitter) isn’t really in Washington D.C., as she learns.
It’s just staying over the city for a few days before moving on. Because it’s a flying base.
Peggy hyperventilates in a maintenance access corridor, sneaks her way into a bathroom, fixes her hair and face and returns to her meeting and orientation day in minutes.
She’s doing fantastic.
---
2012 is very interesting.
Peggy has many lists.
She buys a notebook for each list, with her impossibly luxurious wage (Barton patiently explains inflation. Peggy tells him that she knows about that. Then he explains wage equality, and Peggy doesn’t know about that, so she skips work for a day going into a research deep dive into the labour strikes of the late 60s, and the UK Equal Pay Act of 1970. She cries a bit. No one needs to know).
The books are lovely leather-bound ones, in rich colours ranging from a deep wine-red to a shining sea blue. Handmade by a family business in London, one she relied on heavily back in her own era. Soft and thick cream paper, Indian ink pens included.
She organises them in chronological or alphabetical order, depending on category. Carries them around in her leather satchel. Stores things in her memory if she can’t write them down in the moment. Carries an emergency pocket notebook in her back pocket. Annoys her new colleagues with her furious scribbling throughout meetings and conversations in the mess hall.
---
There’s a list for political developments and missed historical events. It sits in her dark red journal. She often leaves it on her desk, updates it coming back from a day of orientation and study and code breaking.
Her first decade specific page is messy but informative, late scribbles in the margins and an ink stain on the top corner.
1945 – 1950
- Allies win the war: Called the Second-World War, does this mean there been more? *no it does not.
- Atomic bomb: Horrific but ends the war. *MORE RESEARCH URGENTLY NEEDED *ATOMIC VETERANS *NUCLEAR POWER *RADIATION POISONING
- England nationalises coal industry: Excellent news!
- India gains independence: Very good for them! *have been informed is still a commonwealth country.
- Israel: Politician? Event? Battle? *has been informed it is a new country. *Jewish population.
- English National Health Service: de-privatisation of health services for all citizens in England. Probably saved countless lives.
- Republic of Ireland: Very good for them! *unlike India, Ireland is no longer a member of the Commonwealth. Northern Ireland is still part of the UK (United Kingdom/Great Britain/England)
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Huge step towards hope for humanity *should memorise all 30 articles
She delights in the versatility of the internet, excitedly chattering about the importance of free information for all people of the general public and the inherent good of Wikipedia to Barton. He laughs and starts a video call with his family and includes Peggy.
If there are security cameras in her room that caught her screaming into her pillow about it that night, then Fury doesn’t mention the footage.
She visits a real physical library and borrows the dozen history books she had put on her first list of the 21st century. The young woman manning the desk stares at her with flushed cheeks, fingers twitching and many rings clacking on the wooden tabletop. Peggy decides to start wearing a cap and sunglasses in public, and a long coat.
She pins manila folders of old S.H.I.E.L.D. and SSR missions onto the corkboard nailed to the wall of her tiny Helicarrier quarters. She carries the finest pens she can find in her breast pockets. She breaks the printer with her super-human strength and gets lectured. She isn’t fired. She thinks it’s as good that she wasn’t as much as she thinks it’s bad she expected to be.
She underlines the word “TROUSERS?!!?” on the first page so many times it bleeds onto the other side. She wears skirts and dresses to work plenty, but trousers. Jeans. Slacks. Pants. Leggings. Cargos.
She loves 2012.
Barton mentions a colleague and his husband as he invites Peggy out for friendly drinks, and she spends 4 days printing out articles and studying and absolutely immersing herself in queer history.
The Lavender Scare makes rage bubble under her skin. Alan Turing’s suicide aches. (She’d met him at MI5. Gentle, kind, lovely, supportive, polite. She chokes down another bought of stress crying and continues reading). The slow backward-forward-backward-standstill-forward decriminalisation of queer relationships in England is tedious. The Gay Liberation Front makes her smile, really smile, at the glowing screen of her computer. The Stonewall Riots make her feel a quiet, vicious vindication. The AIDS epidemic doesn’t need words to describe how she feels. (She cries a bit and drinks some water to stop her from dehydrating). Strength and bravery and more strength and fear and just enough bravery to keep fighting.
She doesn’t sleep that night as she follows a Wikipedia rabbit hole on “Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners”. Section 28 disgusts her to the core. The death of Freddie Mercury intrigues her (Peggy opens her blue journal and writes “Queen: possible mainstream gay band, explore”) . The changing age of consent leaves her dizzy. Lesbians who patrolled clubs with Molotovs and cricket bats. The Labour government allowing queer men and women to join the armed forces. Adoption, marriage, banning of harassment in the workplace, teaching in schools.
Clint asks if she’s been having nightmares when he sees her sluggish movements and exhausted eyes, and she gives the shortest version possible of her research, and he laughs good-naturedly and offers a friendly hug.
She takes it, because Clint is lovely.
She calls his wife again, because opening her friendship circle is what her therapist calls healthy.
---
There’s a whiteboard in the Helicarrier mess hall.
A whiteboard is like a chalkboard but doesn’t leave smears of chalk everywhere and is practically effortless to use. The markers smell like toxic gas. Peggy doesn’t understand why they were ever evolved but doesn’t say that aloud.
It has her name at the top in artistic red and blue with black outline and a perfect Union Jack in the corner.
CAPTAIN CARTER’S 1943 – 2012 MUSIC LIST! SUBMISSIONS OPEN! *no Backstreet Boys allowed! *don’t be a music snob Nat
There’s a... huge list.
Title, artist, year. In every style of handwriting possible and half a dozen colours. Some of the suggestions aren’t in English, but have translations included by kind co-workers. Sticky notes (they’re strange. The glue is irritating and needs to be scrubbed off her skin like motor oil. Although the colour is very beautiful, she can concede) are smacked over songs, with added notes or public opinions. She stands in front of it scribbling the names into her pocket notebook and eating a bowl of beef stew as Barton follows her
No Particular Place To Go – Chuck Berry – 1957 *the father of rock ‘n roll! *no, the beginning of rock ‘n roll started with black queer woman Rosetta Tharpe. Listen to Chuck Berry anyway tho Carter :D :D
She writes “Rock ‘ n roll?” on the glossary page of her notebook and finds the song online, hips swaying with the music as she tidies the messy papers and books strewn across her room. She asks Barton about the :D. He tells her to look at it sideways to see the Friendly Smiling Face. She smiles back
Rescue Me – Fontella Bass – 1966 *make sure u have a good stereo Captain <3 <3 *might wanna focus on British music too, mate *but British music is as bad as it’s cooking *you know she’s reading these notes, right? *what’s she gonna do, hunt me down?
She reads a book on modern slang that one of Barton’s spy friends finds her. The love hearts are as cute as the Friendly Smiling Face, and she starts using them in her messages to Barton. He sends an incomprehensible mess of capital letters in return, and her codebreaker soul immediately interprets it as a message to be decoded. It isn’t.
If I Could See The World (Through The Eyes Of A Child) – Patsy Cline – 1962 *nice, slow and calm. Also it’s really ironically sweet. Whatever. 8/10 hope u enjoy
It’s a lovely song. It’s her new favourite. Fury gives her a slightly sad and bitter smile out of the corner of her eye when he catches her muttering the lyrics under her breath.
Patsy Cline is a good adjustment from the music of the 30s and 40s she’s used to. Slow, clam, nice. She makes a playlist for studying and adds Patsy Cline first.
Barton teasingly calls her grandma as he sorts files with her, and something warm and nauseatingly good bubbles in her heart.
So Emotional – Whitney Houston – 1987 *sorry dude, that might be a bit too much of a leap across the earlier rock ‘n roll/rock/punk/disco/funk/soul/dance genres that came before it, but it’s a great suggestion for when she reaches the 80s *but it’s her best song! *her best song is I Wanna Dance With Somebody you common stale *what did you just call me?
Carter decides to put that song on the backburner and adds her own note from the pocket notebook that asks why there are so many genres of music. She nearly drops her cup of coffee next day when she sees a dozen more sticky notes added onto her query.
Time Has Come today – The Chamber Brothers – 1967 *the next person to add a SINGLE British song to the list? I will kiss you on the mouth *ignore her Carter. There are other recordings of THCT but this is the best and the original
Her head bops to the clunking drum beat and her shoulders sway with her hips to the music. She tells Barton about getting it in her head and he tells her about a barfight in Miami he got into while this song played.
She starts putting red ticks next to songs she approves and percentage scores. Small golden circle stickers get included next to songs with a rating higher than 75% percent, and no one can figure out who has been doing it. A poster for the onboard vaccination clinic gets moved to make space for another whiteboard. Her playlist grows to 7 hours and 57 minutes in total listening time. She keeps adding songs.
Oh Girl – The Chi-Lites – 1972 *the glorious combination of R&B, soul and country. Play this song at my funeral and serve tequila to all *you dramatic idiot
Peggy likes the song, in moderation. She adds it to the playlist despite the way that the weird keening grates on her ears after too long. Clint tells her it’s a harmonica, and she investigates that too.
A communications officer catches her humming it on her walk to the gym and tells her it was his suggestion, nose piercing shining in the fluorescent lights of the hallway and thick locs of hair draped over his warm brown eyes. Carter does more research. It feels like she’s back at college, studying for her PhD, except now she can wear trousers and has the internet. And the food is better.
Lady Marmalade – Labelle – 1975 *sorry dear, Lady Marmalade was in fact recorded and released in 1974 *but I searched it *you might’ve accidentally seen the stamp on the live performance of 1975 honey *dammit *also Carter I know u went into military service at the end of the sexual revolution but you do know French and it’s a VERY suggestive song *are y’all really gonna recommend Patti fucking Labelle to the Captain Carter with a 100% straight face *there’s nothing straight about me recommending this song
Carter loves the song. She has decided it’s her favourite. Maria Hill doesn’t like it but admits that songs don’t get so loved and remembered for decades upon decades if they aren’t good. Barton throws an arm over Hill’s shoulder and teases her
The French is indeed very suggestive. Peggy isn’t a prude, and the sticky note was very right about the Roaring 20s.
Peggy listens to more of their music and is sadly disappointed. She sticks with Lady Marmalade and starts looking into Gloria Gaynor.
Her playlist is now 20 hours and 42 minutes of music. It grows as a third whiteboard is added to the wall for movies, television and novels.
---
Barton invites her to meet his close friend Natasha Romanoff, and Peggy gets a new diary, in beautiful soft brown leather for timekeeping. Appointments, meeting, sessions with her therapist, social gatherings.
They meet in a small pancake diner in Brooklyn with an unimaginative name and a frigid but skilled waitress, and Barton orders an entire plate of hashbrowns and dumps a liberal serving of spicy mayonnaise on them, mixing it in with the complementary maple syrup and taking a big bite.
Peggy stares with a very English expression before turning back to the diner entrance as a red-haired woman wanders in wearing an all-black outfit of leather and denim, face alert but friendly.
A soft smirk breaks out on her face as she walks to their table, hitting her knuckles against Barton’s. Peggy flinches at the sound of the dull knock.
“So, this is who you were planning to introduce me to?” Romanoff mutters teasingly, sliding into the seat next to Peggy and scanning the room. Her jacket looks gently worn, shiny at it’s cuffs and elbows. Peggy’s trained eye can see a gun under the clothes.
“Captain Carter,” Barton stage-whispers across the booth, choking on a chunk of potato a moment later. Peggy grins awkwardly.
“Oh. That’s cool,” Romanoff replies calmly, stealing a hashbrown smothered in sriracha-mayo and maple syrup. Peggy swallows down a grimace.
“You not hungry?” Barton offers, a smidge of maple syrup dribbling from the corner of his mouth. A lesser woman of the 1940s would’ve been deeply offended at his manners. Peggy knows better, but nausea still swirls in her stomach.
She scans the list of unappealing and greasy foods. Eggs, pancakes, hashbrowns, bacon. She settles on bacon and hashbrowns with a coffee, dubious as to the quality of the offered tea option.
She finishes her food and orders three more plates, sheepishly smiling at the impressed but concerned stares of the workers.
Barton offers a bite of maple/hot sauce/mayonnaise. Peggy can’t hide her grimace this time.
“What, you scared? Come on, Grandma Great Britain, just take a bite,” Romanoff teases, and Peggy stabs aggressively at a chunk on the plate, shoving it into her mouth and glaring at Romanoff and ignoring the crimson blush that makes her ears flame.
It burns. It literally burns. Peggy thinks they’ve poisoned her until they reassure that the food’s supposed to hurt.
A few minutes later and she thinks she might understand the appeal. The slow burn, the mouth-watering ache, the craving.
She takes her sea green journal, tracing a finger along the mottled leather on its cover, and scribbles “HOT SAUCE: Sriracha mayo, buy a bottle for oneself, works well with classic hashbrowns and maple syrup, made from similar herbs and vegetables to ground pepper”.
Romanoff tells her that plenty of cuisines use similar styles of flavouring. Peggy is intrigued.
Peggy creates several new categories in her book.
Barton brings her clear plastic containers of boiling hot curries that settle low in her chest like brandy, tikka masala paneer and murgh makhani with grilled chicken chunks.
Romanoff brings banh mi, and French bread rolls are familiar, and a classic pork crackling in a tangy sauce is nice, but the vegetables are new, and everything is new, except Peggy finishes four entire rolls in one sitting with Romanoff, who laughs at her greedy excitement without a malicious bone in her body on display. Peggy hides her smile in her iced coffee.
The flavour is usually so rich and overwhelming that she nearly chokes whenever she takes a bite, and she falls violently ill several time. Peggy grew up in the Great Depression, and when that ended, she ate what could be afforded to civilians. Rationed sugar, vegetables, flour, butter, bread, milk and no flavour. A kilogram of ground pepper cost more than her annual St Martin-In-The-Fields admission fees.
And now she’s eating Mexican with Barton and Romanoff in her quarters, and they tell her that there are easily half-a-dozen variations on burritos, some including melted cheese. Melted cheese? Peggy’s interested.
Barton explains that every culture on earth has made a variation of the dumpling: carbohydrate-filled dough made from any grain or starch available, stuffed with a more flavoursome and nutritious filling (meat, fish, vegetables, dairy, sugar, legumes. Anything on hand, really) and then cooked by any means possible.
Pasties, samosas, cepelinai, pierogies, gyoza, spanakopita, domplines, empanadas, pasties, boraki, kroppkaka, ravioli, pantrucas, mandu, gnocchi... Peggy tries all of them, rates them in her book. Romanoff tells her that she’s only joining in to exploit the opportunity for free food, Peggy laughs and lets her into her quarters as they share a box of fried rice.
She gets invited to a small lunch date with a rowdy group of S.H.I.E.L.D. Field Agents, lets them all test their cooking on her. They recommend more songs to her personally, and she diligently scribbles nonsense words like Mamma Mia and The Village Green Preservation Society and Pinball Wizard into her pocket diary as the woman who barely reaches her elbow coos at her, smooth but rebellious curls falling into her eyes over her goggles and fingers twitching constantly.
A gruff man with over a dozen piercings and tattoos crawling up his neck hands her a pizza with a fried egg smashed onto its surface, and his green eyes twinkle as his scar-ruined freckles twist into a grin at her reaction of delight. She ignores Barton retching dramatically
One of her colleagues shyly presents her with a silver platter of airy and fried bread and a range of dips, small face soft and round with excitement. Her hair is tucked into a sleek black and grey headdress of thick fabric, and Peggy does more research when she gets back to her quarters, stomach full and soul flying into the clouds.
Then she remembers that she technically is flying and has been for the last two weeks, and she nearly screams into her pillow again.
Fried chicken... except there’s no chicken. It’s cauliflower florets baked in a breadcrumb batter, which is actually made from gluten free oats crushed into a coarse meal, a vegan soymilk and rice flour batter and a range of spices. The girl who offers it silently gestures with her hands and grins so blindingly it leaves Peggy dizzy as Barton translates cheerfully. The fried chicken that isn’t chicken and isn’t fried is so good that Peggy nearly finishes the entire tray.
She eats steamed pork dumplings from the warm bamboo box that the oldest of the field agents offers, dough sweet and soft. She stares in wonder at the package of perfectly flavoured meat tucked into her palm and takes another bite. She chokes on her mouthful when the older man grins, wrinkles crumpling at his white temples, and asks if she wants the recipe.
She writes it into her journal, hands trembling slightly and heart bursting at the seams with warmth.
---
Barton teases a co-worker who brings him a cold coffee with jelly inside it (It has jelly inside it how much did that cost – Peggy stares into the middle-distance as she tries calculating the cost and misses their whole conversation. Turns out it was in Japanese.) and mentions Lizzie 2: Electric Boogaloo. Peggy can’t even hide her confusion. He tells her that she’s the Queen of England.
Peggy reads about the new queen, and her incestuous marriage of convenience with the racist and sexist Prince Phillip.
It’s one of the first things that doesn’t surprise her in 2012.
Maria Hill calls Romanoff a Cold War relic, and Peggy rants to Barton and Romanoff the next day about the lost opportunity for cooperation and national alliance between the USSR and the United States, about how the fight against Nazi Germany was supposed to unite the people into brotherhood. Barton laughs, Romanoff stays silent and smiles tightly.
Peggy finds out about the Vietnam War, talks to the veteran who works in the communications centre with the bullet wound stretched between his collar bones, about the sleepless nights and the missing love. The men in the Saigon bar, dancing the night away and kissing away their safety.
Peggy brings him edelweiss, ivy and rosemary flowers when she can, gives him a warm and strong hug. Even if she can’t go about saving the world just yet, she figures making the day of one good man is what matters. The people who suffer in war are people, not nations.
The gapes at the history book in front of her. SUCCESSFUL POLIO VACCINE ANOUNCED TO THE WORLD – APRIL 2ND 1955. It’s... a lot. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of lives saved and a lot of emotion to compartmentalise so she can sleep that night. Peggy reaches the Civil Rights book next on her list that same evening and forgoes the night of sleep anyway.
Fury sighs as she enters the room the next day and asks her to leave the meeting and have a short nap to prepare for the rest of her workday. He brings her a cup of chamomile tea that afternoon, having his own acidly strong black coffee instead. It’s nice that he cares, the way he tells her to watch her health, asks how her meetings with the new therapist Wilson are going (the last one quit after the first time she dared bringing up the tentacle dimension. She understands completely). It’s a nice separation from John Flynn. Mutual respect, maybe not trust, but understanding.
The release of the oral contraceptive pill. President Kennedy assassinated in Dallas sunshine and the mystery surrounding his death. An American man walking on the moon. The recognition of the Polish nation and government. The tearing down of the Berlin wall. The 9/11 terrorist attacks. Barack Obama being elected.
Peggy puts down the book and lets out a deep, rattling breath. She stares at her brushed metal ceiling, music still faintly playing in the background.
He said he's going back to find – what’s left of his world – the world he left behind – not so long ago...
Peggy stands up and riffles through her spartan quarters, pulling out a soft cream folder of files, flipping it open and brushing her fingers along the clean and colourful photograph glued onto the profile.
Bucky Barnes. Age 95. Living in a brownstone Brooklyn apartment with his husband. White hair combed back, beard clipped down. Looking surprisingly strong and young for his age.
We’ve informed Barnes that you’re alive and recovering. He’d love to see you.
- Maria Hill
Peggy picks up the note and squints at the tiny handwriting. Her smile wobbles as she discards of the paper and picks up the next file.
Howard Stark. Deceased. Died in a car accident in 1991. Unbelievably suspicious lack of witnesses, on a secluded Long Island road. She isn’t a detective and she already knows it’s an assassination. Judging by Natasha’s rambling note pages and sticky notes about suspicious bruising around Maria’s neck or bullets in tires, she’s not the only one. She doesn’t know what’s worse; the implication that Howard beat his future wife (which seems so disconnected from the man she knew that she can’t bear to imagine it), or that it was assumed he had caused the damage.
She takes out the next file.
Steve Roger. Deceased. Died of heart failure in 1958. Age 40. Autopsy report, details on the HYDRA Stomper’s Legacy, a footnote about his exhibition in the Smithsonian. A bright blue sticky note.
Whenever you’re ready. Love you super lots (as a friend) and hope you find what you need to see. Closure, I guess.
- Your new best friend Clint :D :D <3 <3
She laughs wetly and starts silently reading, tears dripping down her cheeks and staining some of the pages.
---
The whiteboard for books has several British classics, and the song list has grown so much that it’s been transferred to an online private forum, and the board wiped clear for more suggestions. After a week it’s refilled.
She reads Slaughterhouse Five while discovering the wonder of The Clash and Angel Eyes by Roxy Music. The book is a little satirical and very dark and very funny. She devours it in mere days, and thanks the officer who suggested it personally. The elderly woman practically faints when she greets her at the door, thanks Peggy for inspiring her future career path. Peggy smiles awkwardly and they drink Earl Grey and eat Jaffa Cakes in the mess hall.
She stares at her ceiling having a crisis after finishing Nineteen Eighty-Four and goes dizzy listening to Golden Brown and Bohemian Rhapsody. Yes, Minister becomes her favourite show overnight as she “binges” the show in a matter of weeks with a small group of UK staff, operatives and engineers she finds on every corner of the Helicarrier. Drunk History is a similarly fun endeavour, though she wishes she could do an episode herself, maybe about herself.
The British Government keeps pestering Fury about when she’ll return to the UK, something he takes a slight amusement in telling her over a morning coffee. She isn’t sure she wants to; they were none to keen to take her back from SSR after learning that she had been the recipient of their expensive serum. It seems a bit insincere to demand her back.
Fury tells her that they want her leading their counter-terrorism taskforce. Peggy shudders at the thought of what they’d make her do in the name of English Peace. She didn’t read about decades of brutal Thatcher policy for the fun of it.
She expands her music list further. Barton recommends Hit Me With Your Best Shot, his favourite song of all time, and is devastated at her score of 6.5/10. She ruffles his hair and promises to find a song perfect for him somewhere.
Faith – George Michael – 1987
Crispy guitar, casual lyrics. The horrible leather jacket Romanoff wants her to wear a replica off. Hips swinging and shoulders rocking as she tidies her rooms or makes lamb pies with the raucous Field Agents of culinary talent. Spice mix crusted under her fingernails, her hands smelling like Clive of India for days. Flour spilt across the galley floor and Maria lecturing them.
This Year’s Love – David Gray – 1998
It reminds Peggy of Steve. She skips it a lot, when she isn’t feeling in the mood. Bucky thinks the same, when she gets bagels with him in New York, visits the same diner where she first met Romanoff. She sings it with her cracking and raspy singing voice, relearns the piano in the gay dive near Bucky’s brownstone.
Video Killed The Radio Star – The Buggles – 1979
She doesn’t understand this song until Barton explains the meaning. She also doesn’t understand why she connects to it strongly. Maybe it’s the thumping baseline, or tinkling synthetic sound, or the morbid irony of the lyrics combined with its soft sound.
It’s kind of funny to read about how much of a true twit the song writer was, she must admit.
Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin – 1971
It’s slow. It’s mystical. It’s interesting. It has a certain magic appeal that draws her in like a magnet, medieval and intriguing. It’s also far easier to sing than most other songs. Barton joins her on Thursday nights to read together and simply exist in the same space as they both work on their separate tasks, and his low and soothing hum of the song helps her feel grounded to the little room and her new little family.
Barracuda – Heart – 1977
Barracuda crunches. There’s no other way to describe it. Rich guitar, drums thumping like a heartbeat. She would’ve liked to fight in Germany with this song playing in her ears. The lyrics are inspiring and strong. She bops her head to it whenever she hears it.
Egg On Pizza Man loves it. He hits every high note in his gravelly voice, as impressive as it is confusing. There are impromptu cooking and karaoke sessions all the time.
I Think We’re Alone Now – Tiffany – 1989
This song is special. Very special. It’s one of Romanoff’s favourites, makes her impulsively sway and wiggle her toes. Her dancing is horrific. It’s natural. It’s clumsy. It’s beautiful.
Barton tries to hit every high note and Peggy laughs as agents spin each other in circles and dance to the music, arms flailing and feet twisting.
The older lieutenant serves dumplings and tea as Peggy stumbles around the galley and mess hall, accepting a dance from every person who offers. Barton tries to drag Maria into it until she almost pushes him into a sink.
---
“When can I start active duty?” Peggy asks, fiddling with the compass nestled silently into her jacket pocket. Wilson leans back and raises an eyebrow, pen hovering over the page.
“You excited to get back into the field?” he asks, writing more things down. Peggy takes a sip of her tea and thinks hard.
“I’m getting what some of my colleagues call cabin fever at headquarters. Quite eager to go out and save some lives, do something useful with my time,” she responds casually. He hums thoughtfully and writes more.
“Is the time you’re spending at headquarters not useful?” he asks. Peggy opens her mouth to agree, then stops. And thinks. And opens her mouth and stops again.
She knows what Wilson wants her to admit.
“You know that’s not what I meant. I’m fully aware that recovery is important,” she nearly rolls her eyes. Wilson looks back at her silently, gaze analytical.
“I think that is what you meant. Carter... there’s nothing saying you must return to military service once deemed fit for combat. You could retire now, you know,” he points out.
Peggy doesn’t know how to feel about that. She thinks about Barton and Romanoff, and about the cooking with her new friends, and her studying for fun and because she can learn more, and the veteran in communications who still gets flowers from her. Her own little family on the Helicarrier, her protectors and her friends.
And then she thinks about saving lives, and stopping HYDRA, and the face of a civilian when she would drag them from the rubble, and the thousands of soldiers she bought back home to their families.
“I think both is good.”